Re: This day

On 22/03/07, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> On 3/22/07, Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:
> > That seems pretty normal to me... 'this' or other referents have to be
> > interpreted in context. If there's no explicit pointing, then you
> > default to some presumed referent.
> >
> > "Next week" is worse. :-P (E.g. if today is Monday and I say we're
> > going to meet next Friday... and then I say it's going to be "moved
> > back" one day... which of the four possibilities are you thinking of?)
>
> If today is Monday the first and you say we're going to meet "next
> Friday", that means the 12th.  (The 5th being "this Friday").  If the
> meeting is then moved back one day, it's now on either Saturday the
> 13th or Monday the 15th, depending on whether or not we're in a
> workday context.  In my business life I  haven't yet run into anyone
> who interprets these phrases differently, although some use other
> phrases instead (like "Friday week"). My British colleagues' use of
> e.g. "half three" to mean "half past three" is the most confusing
> difference I've run across as regards time spec.
>
In Finnish and German, where time is concerned, "halb zwei" (for
example) means not "half two", which would be the literal translation,
but "half one". I'm curious why you need to disambiguate the British
usage, though; seems pretty categorical to me. (Either the British or
the German/Finnish does; the difficulty is in remembering which is
which.)

Jeff
> --
> Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
>

--
Q: What will happen in the Aftermath?

A: Impossible to tell, since we're still in the Beforemath.

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